The Eye of the Beholder

Hard on the heels of Stair Porn, I bring you another source for reassurance that beautiful doesn't have to be artsy. Eye of the beholder, m'boy, eye of the beholder.

I've came across these pictures by Branislav Kropilak
for years. Naturally, I can't recall where I first saw them, but I urge you to take a look. He works in a medium known as a "Giclee print on aluminium" which means nothing to me, but which seems to provide a hard-edged, glowing result. I find the pics of parking garages especially attractive, and used one as my desktop photo for a year.
The point is that you don't need to be Ansel Adams out shooting Yellowstone, or Atget
memorializing the exotic gardens of France. It's the process that counts. You can take beautiful—that's actually a lousy word, one that puts up more obstacles—let's say you can put up visually stimulating photos of anything. The physical realities exist, apart from you. The value of the photographs is in your investigation/analysis/presentation of the subject.

Leave the bee-yoo-tee-full stuff to your Uncle Mike, who loves to shoot sunsets and hydrangeas and little puppies. Find something to look at, and think about it. Never mind anything else. Just think about it and shoot it. The subject doesn't need to be "aesthetic" or "photogenic." It just needs to be considered, carefully and honestly, and photographed, as well as you can. And it doesn't have to be a "Giclee print." Just a JPEG--one that you can look at a year from now and regain the state of mind you had when you shot it.